


Good Things and Ugly Things

by cinnamonsnaps



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Western, Cowboys & Cowgirls, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-26 03:25:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19759633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinnamonsnaps/pseuds/cinnamonsnaps
Summary: cowboy/wild west au!Reverend Raphael hasn't gone by his old name in a long, long time. When a tall dark stranger knocks on his door and brings a dire warning, it isn't long before rumours start to spread: what's a holy man doing talking to wanted men?(aziraphale is a preacher, crowley is an infamous gunslinger, and there's a lot of spitting)





	Good Things and Ugly Things

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for clicking. let's get this show on the road

Reverend Raphael leaned back in his chair, placed his Bible on the table, and reached under his desk for the little compartment where his gun was hid. 

The door to his office opened, and briefly let in the sun: a tall dark figure, completely obscured in shadow, held the door open. 

"Come inside, stranger," Raphael said after a moment of silence. "Shake off the dust."

"Stranger?" 

The figure stepped forward and closed the door behind him, and as Raphael's eyes adjusted, his hand tightened on the gun. 

"Fine way to address an old friend."

"Crowley," Raphael said, and his voice reverberated with it. There was a long, long history behind that name, and by God did it echo, filling each note with something thick, something gelatinous, the kind that stuck in your teeth something awful. 

"Aziraphale."

"Raphael. They don't call me that here."

"Pardon, your reverend."

Crowley remained standing. Raphael's finger twitched. 

"Siddown. Let's open up a bottle, old time's sake. I got a beautiful scotch calling."

"Aren't holy men 'sposed to be sober?"

"You gonna tell on me?"

Another silence. Crowley slunk onto the chair opposite, settling down into the thick, worn cushion. "Holy men don't do bad things."

"What brings you here, Crowley? It's been years."

"Reckon," said Crowley, and it wasn't a question. "Settled down, huh."

"I tend my flock. Still running?"

"By and by."

The moment settled. A mosquito drifted between the men, buzzing loudly, getting caught in a shaft of hot sunlight from a gap in Raphael's leaky roof. Raphael studied Crowley's face.

Still the same. Chiselled, rough from the wind and sun, burnished a deep red in places. Those damnable shades covering his eyes. Red hair. A wild man, half fox, from off the hills, come poking round civilization on the scent of something good. 

"Take your hand off that gun," Crowley said suddenly, breaking the silence, "and pour me a drink. Make a man jumpy."

Raphael snorted, but did so anyway. His hand moved out of his gun drawer and moved lower to the bottom drawer, where he kept his ruin and a couple squat glasses just for these occasions. 

"What are you doing in my town, Snake-eye?"

"Don't call me that," Crowley said, irritably, "nobody calls me that."

"This town calls you that." Raphael poured two generous fingers in each glass. "Say ol' Snake-eye never misses, always gets his man. Say he made a deal with the devil himself 'til he was quicker'n gunshot, and slippery as oil through your fingers. That true?"

"You spend too much time listening to gossip," Crowley replied, reaching across to take a glass and sniffing it with an appreciative hum. "You always stock the very best, dontcher."

"Gossip can be useful," Raphael replied, "and word travels fast in this town. Reckon the word's already spreading that a tall stranger's rolled into town and stormed the reverend's office." He examined Crowley, his eyes roaming his face freely. "They'll kill you soon as see you, you know. Up here with pitchforks and torches within the hour. So what's worth coming and stirring up trouble for?"

Crowley smiled for the first time, a dry, low slung smile. "Can't I come say hi?"

Raphael shook his head in exasperation. Crowley leaned forward in his chair, smile sliding off, hat tipping forward in earnest:

"There's a war coming,  _ ángel _ . Been coming a long time. You know, don't you."

Aziraphale - Raphael, God damn it, Raphael - shook his head. "We finished with wars."

"We  _ ain't _ ," Crowley spat. "You know we ain't."

"By we, you mean that gang of lawless yokels you ride around with?"

"You still capin' for the Church, Aziraphale?"

Neither of them answered for a while. The mosquito buzzed indifferently, before landing on Crowley's jacket sleeve. 

His hand darted out and slapped it before it could fly away, before Raphael's eyes could catch up. Snake-eye indeed. He'd never met anyone faster. 

"Both sides," Crowley said, lowly. "All sides. Hell, any side there is, they're all gonna be joining in soon. Gonna turn this place into one great battlefield the likes of which we haven't seen since the massacre, and that's just fer starters. You ready? Ready to ride and die for those fat corrupt ol men you call holy?"

Raphael opened his mouth to answer, when a gunshot sounded from outside, interrupting their little meeting. A loud voice yelled:

_ "We know you got Snake-eye in there, Reverend. We want him. Send him out in thirty seconds 'fore we enter'n and take'm." _

Raphael nodded to the door behind him. "Stairs to the cellar, follow the passage, you'll come out in Mike's bodega. He'll look away, but only once."

"You can't be complacent forever,  _ ángel _ ," Crowley said, before draining his glass and standing up. "Time'll come to pick a side. It's begun."

_ "Twenty five seconds! Snake-eye, you're gonna answer for your crimes!" _

Raphael watched him cross the room. As he watched, he said, "behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it." 

_ "Ten seconds!"  _

"Praying for my soul, father?" Crowley grinned, and Raphael shook his head, putting his scotch back in his drawer.

"Just reminding you of the big picture."

_ "Eight!"  _

"You murdered, Crowley."

_ "Seven!" _

"You killed in cold blood."

_ "Six!" _

"..."

_ "Five!"  _

"Just remember, Raphael," Crowley replied.

_ "Four!" _

"There'll be no winners in the war."

_ "Three!" _

"No good or bad men."

_ "Two!" _

"Just men trying to survive."

_ "One-!" _

When the townsfolk opened the door in the breathless moments after one, they opened it to find Reverend Raphael standing behind it, staring at them all with a very amiable smile and his hands held gently at his front. He looked, then, just like he always did before a sermon or during a pleasant conversation. 

"Yes, gentlemen?"

"We heard Snake-eye slunk into your office," a man near the front spat, trying to glare past the reverend into his room. "He's a wanted man, your grace, and holy as thou may be, harbouring a criminal's a hanging offence."

"Snake-eye?" The reverend beamed. "Do you hear yourself, Jessop? As if such a felon would walk into our town in broad daylight and come and knock on my door, gay as you please."

"Then who was it?"

"An old friend."

"Oh yeah?"

Jessop made the mistake of staring Raphael in the eye, hoping to intimidate him - and recoiled when he hit steel blue, hard as flint, staring steadily back at him. The stare seemed to pierce right through him, seemed to say, I know who you are, I know why you're here. I know more about you than you yourself know, and it's only by the grace of God that I'm not hauling you out in front of your peers and fellow townfolk. It was a blue that brooked no argument, a cold, icy strength that showed no sign of looking away, of even wavering. 

Jessop looked away first. 

"Oh yeah," said Raphael. "Is that all?"

"Harrumph," said Jessop, and put away his gun. "Sure would be a bad thing if you were colluding with the very men who threaten our lives, wouldn't it."

"Holy men don't do bad things," Raphael said pleasantly, "only ugly things."

The crowd dispersed. Raphael bade them safe travels and pleasant afternoons with a tip of his wide brimmed hat, and soon he was alone again, bar one. 

Jessop leaned against the wall, side eyeing him.

"Don't you have a home to go to?"

"Too busy thinking, reverend."

That's unusual, Raphael nearly said, but restrained himself. "That so."

"You're right that Snake-eye wouldn't come to any old town during the day, out in the open like this. Stands to reason that he wouldn't, or he wouldn'ta survived fer so long."

Raphael nodded. "I have a feeling there's a but involved."

" _ But _ ," Jessop said, "what if there was something worth coming for? Something he just couldn't stay away from, no matter the danger."

Raphael nodded reasonably. "Gold? Sure, but we're not exactly a rich town."

"Sure we ain't," Jessop said. He watched Raphael a little longer. "They say there was only one man who was ever faster'n Snake-eye."

Raphael hummed in curiosity. 

"Really?"

"Say that selfsame man stared Snake-eye down, and the old serpent blinked first. Say he had him running, almost, would have killed him stone dead, but changed his mind last minute. Now what kind of man, who could be the deadliest motherfucker this side of the Mojave, would let a piece of shit rival like that live?"

Jessop watched carefully, before continuing:

"Someone kind, maybe. Full of love and forgiveness. Wouldn't expect a man like that to last long out here."

Raphael nodded. Jessop kept talking. 

"I don't think so. I think a man like that's  _ cruel _ . You think you're the best, and you are. Invincible. You don't fear death, death fears you, top of the world, and then you meet the man who could kill you at any time as he pleases. You can't beat him. Can't outshoot him. Can't outrun him. Can't even look him in the eye, and he doesn't even have the decency to put you out of your misery. He spares your life, and you know he owns it. Reckon you'd come running to find him wherever he was."

Raphael made a noncommital noise, and Jessop leaned forward. 

"Say he was a man of the cloth. Now, what'd'you think of  _ that _ , father?"

Raphael ruminated, chewing over the idea in his mouth like a cow and its cud, before speaking with a sense of finality. 

"I think you're a fine  _ cuentista _ , Jessop, and you got a book in you yet." 

Jessop spat a fat horker in disgust, and finally stalked off, muttering under his breath about God and testing and reverends. Raphael just stood, and watched the dust settle. 

"They don't understand us at all," he said finally, and walked back into the cool dark of his office, shutting the door behind him. 

* * *


End file.
